elementary OS

elementary OS is an Ubuntu-based desktop distribution. Some of its more interesting features include a custom desktop environment called Pantheon and many custom apps including Photos, Music, Videos, Calendar, Terminal, Files, and more. It also comes with some familiar apps like the Epiphany web browser and a fork of Geary mail.

To compare the software in this project to the software available in other distributions, please see our Compare Packages page.

Notes: In case where multiple versions of a package are shipped with a distribution, only the default version appears in the table. For indication about the GNOME version, please check the "nautilus" and "gnome-shell" packages. The Apache web server is listed as "httpd" and the Linux kernel is listed as "linux". The KDE desktop is represented by the "plasma-desktop" package and the Xfce desktop by the "xfdesktop" package.

What are your thoughts on elementary OS?Please include a few pros and a few cons, along with your overall impression of the operating system.
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Version: 5.0Rating: 8Date: 2018-11-15Votes: 4

On the whole, it's been a pleasant experience. The desktop environment feels clean and refined. The settings exposed to the user are lacking, and the third-party "Tweaks" switchboard plug-in is a must-have for basic customization. Sure, it's not as fleshed out feature-wise as the more established distros, but what's there is fast, fluid, and familiar.

Upon first boot, elementary had my 4K HiDPI display running with 2x scaling for GTK applications, which looked *great*. Out of the box, Qt applications were using a less refined scaling mode similar to that used by Windows XP: text-based elements rendered at appropriate sizes, but images were too small. Setting QT_AUTO_SCREEN_SCALE_FACTOR=1 at boot fixed that, and now Qt apps scale uniformly. I also needed to install some packages and tweak some environment variables before I could get Qt apps to use the GTK style. I'm surprised that a distro so heavily inspired by macOS didn't spend more time on UI consistency.

The console was effectively unusable due to the tiny font sizes; I had to move my face within a few inches of the screen to read the grub menu. Some quick searching was all I needed to switch to a larger console font, but updating grub was a bit more involved. I'd like to see this taken care of automatically in future releases.

I have heard other users complain about theme-related issues with other GNOME/GTK applications. I haven't encountered anything egregious, but these days I mostly stick to Firefox, various JetBrains IDEs (not based on GTK), and the terminal. Speaking of, the terminal app could certainly use more settings. At least with Elementary Tweaks it was easy to change the default font size, though it could probably be done through the dconf editor.

8/10 for a slick experience, but a ways to go before hitting 10/10.

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Version: 5.0Rating: 5Date: 2018-11-14Votes: 4

There are several bugs I have run into with this new version so beware of this before you install hopefully bug fixes are coming sooner then later!